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."That--that!" rolled out Anderson, waving his big hand, as if words wereuseless."Only a corner of the great old U.S.!.What would the Germanssay if they could look out over this?.What do _you_ say, Lenore?""Beautiful!" she replied, softly."Like the rainbow in the sky--God'spromise of life!""An', Kathie, what do _you_ say?" went on Anderson."Some wheat-fields!" replied Kathleen, with an air of woman's wisdom."Fetch on your young wheat-sowers, dad, and I'll pick out a husband.""An' _you_, son?" finished Anderson, as if wistfully, yet heartilyplaying his last card.He was remembering Jim--the wild but belovedson--the dead soldier.He was fearful for the crowning hope of hisyears."As ye sow--so shall ye reap!" was Dorn's reply, strong and thrilling.And Lenore felt her father's strange, heart-satisfying content.* * * * *Twilight crept down around the old home on the hill.Dorn was alone, leaning at the window.He had just strength to leanthere, with uplifted head.Lenore had left him alone, divining his wish.As she left him there came a sudden familiar happening in his brain,like a snap-back, and the contending tide of gray forms--theHuns--rushed upon him.He leaned there at the window, but just the samehe awaited the shock on the ramparts of the trench.A ferocious andterrible storm of brain, that used to have its reaction in outwardviolence, now worked inside him, like a hot wind that drove his blood.During the spell he fought out his great fight--again for the thousandthtime he rekilled his foes.That storm passed through him without anoutward quiver.His Huns--charged again--bayoneted again--and he felt acute pain in theleft arm that was gone.He felt the closing of the hand which was notthere.His Huns lay in the shadow, stark and shapeless, with white facesupward--a line of dead foes, remorseless and abhorrent to him, foreverdamned by his ruthless spirit.He saw the boy slide off his bayonet,beyond recall, murdered by some evil of which Dorn had been the motion.Then the prone, gray forms vanished in the black gulf of Dorn's brain."Lenore will never know--how my Huns come back to me," he whispered.Night with its trains of stars! Softly the darkness unfolded down overthe dim hills, lonely, tranquil, sweet.A night-bird caroled.The songof insects, very faint and low, came to him like a still, sad music ofhumanity, from over the hills, far away, in the strife-ridden world.Theworld of men was there and life was incessant, monstrous, andinconceivable.This old home of his--the old house seemed full ofPage 231ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlwell-remembered sounds of mouse and cricket and leaf against the roofand soft night wind at the eaves--sounds that brought his boyhood back,his bare feet on the stairs, his father's aloofness, his mother's love.* * * * *Then clearly floated to him a slow sweeping rustle of the wheat.Breast-high it stood down there, outside his window, a moving body,higher than the gloom.That rustle was a voice of childhood, youth, andmanhood, whispering to him, thrilling as never before.It was a growingrustle, different from that when the wheat had matured.It seemed tochange and grow in volume, in meaning.The night wind bore it, butlife--bursting life was behind it, and behind that seemed to come adriving and a mighty spirit.Beyond the growth of the wheat, beyond itslife and perennial gift, was something measureless and obscure, infiniteand universal.Suddenly Dorn saw that something as the breath and theblood and the spirit of wheat--and of man.Dust and to dust returnedthey might be, but this physical form was only the fleeting inscrutablemoment on earth, springing up, giving birth to seed, dying out for thatever-increasing purpose which ran through the ages.A soft footfall sounded on the stairs.Lenore came.She leaned over himand the starlight fell upon her face, sweet, luminous, beautiful [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]